THE GERMANS AT SCHOOL 603 



of reaction has set in in America. The tradition that German univer- 

 sity work represents the highest standards of scholarship has recently 

 been roughly handled by skeptics. Some have claimed that German 

 university research is too specialistic and on that account too narrow. 

 The German scholars lack the wide perspective which has been char- 

 acteristic of so much of the best English work. Others insist that the 

 structure of the German publications is formless. They long for the 

 French polish and clearness. Some blame the German professors for 

 a certain remoteness from life and feel that American scholarship will 

 abolish this kind of " scholarship for scholars " and will again unite sci- 

 ence and life. It was inevitable that such a reaction should occur. The 

 young generation of American university instructors found a situation 

 entirely different from that which their teachers had found some de- 

 cades before. Great American universities had been built up in the 

 meantime and had created a new spirit of scholarly independence which 

 naturally took the turn of a slight opposition to the former masters. 

 But such reactions are only passing moods. Those who know German 

 scholarship to-day have no doubt that all these accusations never have 

 had less justice than at present. Certainly German scholarship is 

 specialistic, and there will never be any true scholarship which is not 

 founded on specialistic work. Any thorough research must be special- 

 istic, and research without thoroughness can never secure lasting re- 

 sults. But the work of the great German naturalists and historians has 

 shown at all times the tendency to wide generalizations, and the present 

 day perhaps more than the last half century is again filled with broad 

 philosophical endeavor. Still more unfair is the often repeated cry 

 against the formlessness of German scholarship. Not every doctor's 

 thesis can be a thing of beauty, but perhaps there has never been a 

 time in which the German language has been so shaped by aesthetic 

 ideals. The German bookbinders were for a long while notorious for 

 tasteless covers, but the general opinion in recent international exhi- 

 bitions has been that now no country makes more beautiful bindings 

 than Germany. This artistic improvement of the book is not confined to 

 the cover. The content of the German book shows a literary finish in 

 structure and style which ought not to be overlooked. Finally, as to the 

 aloofness of German scholarship, the triumphs of modern German tech- 

 nique and medical therapy speak loudly enough of the comradeship be- 

 tween science and life. And how could it be otherwise in a country 

 which has become so mark-hunting and practical. The best proof of the 

 injustice of such accusations and attacks lies in the number of Amer- 

 ican students who still feel attracted by the German academic atmos- 

 phere in spite of the wonderful development of American higher insti- 

 tutions of learning. 



Last winter there were three hundred American students in Ger- 



